Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 15
 Glad I found this August 17, 2006
Sam I Am (Ohio)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
It's hard for me to imagine why books like this appear to be so little known, when Blood Orange is just as good as novels such as The Lovely Bones or The Memory Keepers Daughter, which float to the top of the bestsellers list. I admit I never would have noticed it, either, if I hadn't seen it sitting on the book shelf at Target.
The story and the writing itself were the strongest points of Blood Orange for me. It's the kind of writing that just draws you in from the first page...something about the flow, the description, the use of metaphors just caught my attention and made me want to keep reading, and every time I said 'I only have time to read for five minutes', I found pages and pages flying by. The story itself was also good, an interesting, well developed premise for a novel with enough plot twists to keep this from turning into a 'let's all sit around and ponder life' kind of story, enough character development to keep it from turning into a shallow thriller.
The only thing I was a on the fence about (hence the 4 stars instead of 5) were some of the characters (Warning: I won't give away the ending, but some spoilers about events within the book ahead). The part about Marsha coming to live with them, for example, and possibly baby-sit? This is treated as a minor tiff between husband and wife when two pages before they were debating the likelihood of this woman being a child murderer/molester. I cannot imagine a mother acting as casually annoyed as Dana does here, or a father even suggesting this, especially when they never give any real reason as to why they would make this offer in the first place. The husband, David, is written as such a class-A jerk in some scenes (grinning for the press and thinking events related to his daughter's kidnaping will make great PR for his law firm, belittling his wife), and yet we're supposed to buy him as a good guy and family man. Even Dana did not seem really believable as a mother to me in places...when she almost walks out on her kid there is no conflict, no agonizing. Overall, page to page, the characters were well-written, but there were a few specific situations where I thought "What on earth?"
Overall, I really recommend this book. It's interesting and engaging - what a shame that it's not right up there with the Sue Millers and the Alice Hoffmans where it should be!
 Didn't quite get it... July 3, 2006
Midwest Book Lover (Columbus, Ohio)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Okay, I obviously missed something that other reviewers saw. I liked this book but I didn't love it. I didn't particularly connect with any of the characters. In fact, some of the characters seemed a little too contrived -- Marsha Fillmore seemed like she came right out of a John Grisham novel; Lexi was a little unbelievable as a 6-foot-tall, red-headed, former model/turned priest; and David seemed a little unbelievable as a former professional football player/turned trial lawyer. I could see perhaps any one of these people, but all of these in one setting? Seems a little unlikely to me. Either that, or my life is extremely un-colorful. (My friends and acquaintances seem to be more of the garden variety!) I also didn't care much for Dana who is the main character -- she seemed a little aloof and extremely selfish to me.
I did think the book was very well written, so I am giving it three stars. I just don't think it was the most believable.
 Excellent! June 18, 2006
J. Watkins (MD)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Blood Orange was one of the first books that I have read in a long time that I found almost faultless. The story interwove the lives of a struggling middle-class family with a parish priest, an abused woman, and chronically depressed man. The way the story flowed so beautifully with the characters all being something more than a cliché.
Dana, the main character, is married to a workaholic attorney husband who is still surprisingly compassionate and playful with his wife and his daughter, Bailey. She is far from perfect, but all of her faults are realistic. Real women (and men) are not without fault. They can be wonderfully sympathetic at times, and completely alienating at others. Blood Orange captures the essence of being human in the story.
The prose is fantastic with whimsical, poignant language that reaches right to your soul. It is simply a fabulous read that anyone can enjoy. Even the story moves rather slowly, filled with flashbacks to add to character development, you soak it up. When I first picked the book up, I thought it would focus more on Bailey's abduction and the process surrounding that. But, it is so much more than that. Pick it up. You'll enjoy it. Grade: A+.
Another Home Run by Dru Campbell April 20, 2006
James H. Brennan (New York City)
2 out of 7 found this review helpful
Drucilla Campbell's _Blood Orange_ is essentially about two strikingly complex women, both complemented by a marvelous surround of characters of almost equal dramatic strength. The author's theme--a recurring one in her work/oeuvre--is the conflictual intensity found so frequently in today's families; especially, how couples, per se, find ingenious ways of coping with the myriad stresses that beset them. Ms. Campbell limns this hard-rock theme of relationships within the modern American "oikos" by creafting her characters' lives--and their often unbearably involving situations--with a lapidarian attention to basic human detail which results in a gut-wrenching realism.
Dana, the "heroine," has an impaired young daughter, Bailey , and a husband, David, who is a lawyer inadvertantly caught up in case of child abuse (murder?)--a happenstance which becomes a tangent of terror once their own daughter is abducted. The second woman is an Episcopal priest, herself beset by harrowing pressures of obligation and nerve-wracking quandries of friendship and vocation.
The author's prose is clean, her images imaginative, her narratives profoundly engaging. Ms. Campbell is a born storyteller; consequently, you cannot read her without becoming as enthralled, as personally involved in her story as if you were one of her characters!
And to read her is to be edified, not only about the exigencies of the modern human condition, but about all manner of places and things--for Drucilla Campbell is "quietly" erudite: she ranges far. Accordingly, in _Blood Orange_ we not only have ambient slices of San Diego (the book's essential setting), but choice vignettes of Florence and the Uffizi...plus an alluring array of commentary references to a great variety of en passant subjects: exotic cuisine, jazz genius Dejango Reinhart, au courant philosophical asides, you-name-it,and all for the reader's delectation.
I thoroughly distrust reviews which contain hypes like 'it's a page turner," or "If you plan to sleep tonight, don't pick up...," but I have to say that there is, on top of so much else, a thriller aspect about _Blood Orange_ that grips you immediately and holds you captivated till the very end.
_Blood Orange_ is every bit as good--in most cases exponentially better--than almost anything presently on the fiction top-10 lists. And the reason is simple: Drusilla Campbell can write. Really write. She is one of those rare authors who has managed to master her craft without forsaking the art of it--she is not afraid of daring creative sorties, risky riffs of language and imagination.
Summarily, if you want to know how American families live today, how they manage their anxieties and survive their crises--and want to be magna-entertained along the way--then by all means get a copy of this book...and when you're finished, you will undoubtedly keep it at hand on your bookshelf to read again one day.
--Reviewed by James Henry Brennan, Psychotherapist, New York City, April 20, 2006
Thoughtful and Interesting October 6, 2005
Brenda Takama (NY)
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I liked this book very much. The characters are believable and I never felt stretched or distracted by any big impossibilities. Instead I was touched, entertained, and moved by the story and its messages. I'll read more of Drusilla's work!
|
